AMD Radeon HD 7850 and 7870 review -
DX11: Battlefield 3

DX11: Battlefield 3

One of the biggest game releases of 2011 is Battlefield 3, a combat immersive game that is about to blow you from your socks. We'll take this title and have a look at DX11 performance with the newest graphics cards.

With the plot set in 2014, SSgt Blackburn leads a five-man squad on a mission to locate, find and safely return a US squad investigating a possible chemical weapons site, whose last known position was a market controlled by a hostile militia called the PLR. Blackburn and his squad is later sent to Tehran to apprehend a high-value target named Al-Bashir. While investigating an underground vault in a local bank, Blackburn and his team learn that the PLR had access to Russian portable nuclear devices, and that two of the devices are missing.

All test runs have enabled:

DX11

Ultra mode

4xMSAAAA enabled

16x AF enabled

HBAO enabled

Level: Operation Swordbreaker

We test at Ultra quality mode, should your graphics card have severe issues running in this configuration, by all means select a lower quality level or disable MSAA, 4xA MSAA will cost you almost a third to half your framerate. The chart above shows various cards in 1920x1200.

We use a run that is located in the Operation Swordbreaker level, have a peek where we are recording:

Above, the level we use to measure game performance. This is the Operation Swordbreaker level - a generic recording, not specific to this graphics card.

Our Battlefield 3 DirectX 11 benchmark run, here we are in DX11 mode with Ultra settings. This is the Operation Swordbreaker level where there is a good balance between GPU load and processor utilization, making this an excellent level to test GPU performance in. There will be levels that are a tiny bit more stringent, there will be levels and sections way more easy. We think this level is the best representation of the game engine though.

AMD Radeon Crimson ReLive Edition Driver OverviewAMD is getting ready for the winter, in this article we look at what AMD labeled the Radeon Crimson ReLive Edition. This is the new 16.12 driver which has had some TLC from AMD. The release is not off...

AMD Radeon RX 480 8GB reviewJoin us as we review the new Radeon RX 480, we test the model fitted with 8GB. It's a graphics card series that will allow you to play your games in both the the Full HD 1080P range as well as gaming...

AMD Radeon Pro Duo Preview and DetailsAMD today releases their Radeon Pro Duo. The product is a dual FIJI GPU based product. Unfortunately there will not be any reviews on this product, and that is going to upset many of you. Especially...

AMD Radeon R9 380X 4GB reviewIn this review we look at the the new AMD Radeon R9 380X 4GB. Thus puppy is rendering your games at very nice performance, even in the WHQD 2560x1440 range. And all that at a very reasonable price a...